Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Collaborative Research...So many questions, so little time.

"Typical challenges at this phase of research could be analyzing qualitative data, participant observation, and/or synthesizing findings in collaborative research."

To a certain extent, we struggle with all three of these issues, but I would weight the last most heavily. Ruben and I have collected an immense amount of rich qualititative data, and although David Biale's "dialectical relationship" between minority communities and the outside environment has provided a framework through which to interpret and analyze this information, synthesizing this data will certainly be difficult. While we have a working thesis, we are struggling to merge three elements of our project-- information on the Jewish community in Amsterdam, data collected on and from the Amsterdam Muslim community, and our own experiences (in relation to gender, the concept of insider/outsider, etc.)--into a cohesive narrative. My question concerns the "personal appendix" recommended by Mirjam and Jessica-- because Ruben and I have had such different and at times almost opposite experiences in terms of access and reception in these communities, how should we organize our impressions and responses? I feel like our reactions to the project experience enrich the paper and can be used as primary evidence to support our thesis, but how can we organize a section in our opinions sometimes contradict one another? I guess this is the quintessential question in collaborative research.

No comments: